Can you clarify how FormsCentral is not FERPA compliant. I read through the information on the link you provide and a few other "security" related web pages in FromsCentral and I not clear how or why FormsCEntral is not FERPA compliant. Please clarify how you came to this conclusion. Thank you.

(a) we aren’t a FERPA regulated entity (since we aren’t a school); and (b) to the extent any school uses our services to host student education records regulated by FERPA, the school (and not Adobe) is solely responsible for ensuring compliance.

Here, that is easy enough for a school that signs up for our services to do, since we provide robust access controls. Under FERPA, only school officials (and various others) with a “legitimate educational interest” to access certain student records may do so. If the school signs up for FormsCentral, the person signing up should ensure they only grant access to regulated data to users that meet the statutory definitions. Our access controls allow them to do this.

Thank you this was very helpful. Basically what I hear you saying is that Adobe is not FERPA compliant, in part because it is not a school, but if as school wanted to use FormsCentral to collect and store student information either short term (a quick student surverys, etc.) or long term, in a way that was compliant with FERPA (i.e. only allowing those with appropriate permission to access the information, etc.) that FormsCentral has the necessary level of security and encription to keep the data secure and be FERPA complaint, again as long as the school does it's part to manage the acess to the data. Correct??

Not quite. We are saying that Forms Central isn’t regulated under FERPA at all. FERPA regulates schools and the access they grant to certain student records. It doesn’t regulate web platforms. If a school wants to store FERPA-regulated records on FormsCentral, then it needs to make sure it grants access to the data it stores there in a way that is compliant with the statute. If you want to understand more about what FERPA does and doesn’t regulate, you should talk with your school’s privacy counsel.